Establishing a wireless connection between two devices, including e.g. steps of device discovery, device selection and connection setup is in many occasions a complicated operation. Multitude of different communication techniques, communication protocols and user-interface components for controlling use of these techniques/protocols may make it uncomfortable or even difficult for a user of a device to successfully perform the steps required for establishing a connection.
Device pairing is a technique that has been developed to facilitate connection establishment between wireless devices in a secure manner when using a short-range wireless communication technique such as Bluetooth (BT) or Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) according to an IEEE 802.11 standard. In device pairing two devices, e.g. a user device and an access point or a user device and an accessory device, in the course of a device selection procedure and a connection establishment procedure between the devices create a shared secret key, which may also be referred to as an authentication key or as a link key.
The pairing process may be followed by a bonding process, which involves storing the link key in the two devices to be used for authentication in subsequent connection establishment procedures between the same two devices. Upon a subsequent connection request from a paired-and-bonded device the link key may be applied to authenticate the other device and hence the connection may be established in a secure manner without need for user action. Consequently, the process of pairing and bonding contributes towards a user-friendly connection establishment between devices, especially between frequently used device pairs.
However, while the pairing and bonding provides user-friendly approach e.g. for wirelessly connecting a user device to access points and accessory devices that are regularly used, the pairing and bonding process that is based on the link key may not be a convenient solution for all usage scenarios. As an example in this regard, when a user has a first user device paired with one or more other devices (e.g. access point(s) and/or accessory device(s)) and he/she wishes to establish the same pairings also for a second user device, the link key based pairing and bonding process needs to be carried out separately with the second user device and each of the other devices to create respective link keys. Especially with a high number of other devices and/or in case the other devices require taking specific user actions to initiate the pairing this may be a tedious and time-consuming process.
As another example, if a first user device is shared by a number of users but the pairing with certain other devices needs to be limited to one or more selected users of the first user device, the link key based approach may not be able to provide the desired limitation without an additional user authentication mechanism. Such mechanisms, however, a likely to complicate the design, implementation and use of the first user device and/or the use of certain other devices—which may be inconvenient or even infeasible especially in case of simple devices with limited (user-interface) capabilities.